


Willful Dereliction of Duty (Via Parkour)

by ladyflowdi



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Fluff, Humor, John Is So Done, Leadership, M/M, Office Blow Jobs, when will these toddlers learn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:22:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29415564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/ladyflowdi
Summary: There are two things he cannot do in this moment: he can’t look at Rodney, and he can’t laugh. If he laughs he will lose all credibility, and the four knuckleheads standing in front of him will think that this kind of stupid behavior is okay. It is most certainly not okay, and when did John turn into his father, seriously?
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Comments: 13
Kudos: 99





	Willful Dereliction of Duty (Via Parkour)

**Author's Note:**

> My first fandom; the best fandom. I just quarantine-rewatched the entire series and the nostalgia punched me in the gut. This is pure fluff and has no redeeming value, I literally wrote it just to make myself smile. I hope you enjoy it too.

John has been in the Air Force for fourteen years, and in that time, he’s learned some stuff.

1\. Despite the DOD push for military unity and cooperation across the branches, it’s a fact that most of the branches weren’t overly fond of the Air Force. The best analogy had come from his buddy Kev, in Afghanistan. “The Air Force is like the spoiled little sister,” he’d said, that stupid smirk on his stupid face. “She’s prettier than the rest of the family, she eats better, she has cooler toys and a nicer apartment, and mommy and daddy claim they don’t have favorites but somehow she always gets first pick of warheads, so her big brothers yank on her pigtails. Thing is, if anyone outside of the family tries to mess with her, her brothers know she can handle herself, but they’ll be there in a hot minute to lay down burning hellfire if someone hurts her.”

At the time John hadn’t really known how to feel about being called a ‘little sister’, and had punched Kev in the tit for it, and Kev had squealed like a stuck pig and swept his legs out from under him and noogied him until John had yelled for mercy because Marines were _assholes_.

2\. He’s a piss-poor leader because he’s a piss-poor officer because he’s quantifiably incapable of making the hard call in all the ways the Air Force wants him to. He’d overseen airmen often in his career, but there’s a reason he’s gotten to where he is via the nearly-being-court-martialed route. John asked too many questions, and sometimes took orders as suggestions, and _chafed_ under rigid authority like his skin would crawl right off his body. His superiors always recognized his ability with aircraft, the almost inhuman way he could make Pave Hawks and F-16s do things they shouldn’t technically be able to do, but inevitably the transfer would come, and inevitably it’d be because he couldn’t play nice with others, because he defied direct orders, or because – as Colonel Jeffries so kindly put it – it was bad on morale to have an insubordinate bat-shit weirdo at the helm of your craft.

John’s always appreciated honesty.

3\. He’s a piss-poor officer, take 2: John’s really, really bad at paperwork. It isn’t something he actively advertises, and as commander of an alien spaceship city in another galaxy one would think he’d brush up on these necessary skills. The fact of the matter is that John has a head for a lot of things, but not for the administrivia of his position. It doesn’t help that there’s just _so much of it_. Annual promotions were the worst. EPRs and OPRs, FITREPs and Chief EVALs, EERs and OERs, and that just covered eighty percent of his American troops, it didn’t even scratch the surface of the international part of his fighting force. If he ever had to look at another Danish evaluation, he’d throw himself off a balcony and be done with it all. It helped that Lorne thrived on paperwork like it was lifeblood, that he _enjoyed_ filling out DD1381s and putting together award packages, because John would have lost his mind by now otherwise.

(3.1. Award packages in the Pegasus Galaxy are wild. _Spearheaded PegGal equiv cattle farm dev; utilizing 14 intnl mission partners & raw materials from mainl, defanged cattle and dsgned/implmntd 1200 sqft pasture & paddock – fed 449 exp mmbrs saved IOA $1.4m deep-space shipped foodstuffs _is not a performance bullet he ever thought he’d write. His life is so weird.)

4\. John’s fighting force consists of roughly 200 American soldiers across the branches, and sixty internationals from Spain, China, Mexico, Canada, Denmark, South Africa, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. John is a shitty commander because he knows the name of every single one of them, what their hobbies are and the names of their dogs back home, their favorite movies and favorite foods and favorite sports. He cares about them because no commander he ever had gave a shit about him, and he swore he’d never be that guy. It’s a dangerous precedent to set, especially in a place like Atlantis, but there was never a choice for him.

5\. John’s been downrange in various foreign combat operations for most of his career, and in that time he’s learned that military service is just a sliding scale of suffering, for the duty member and for their families. It’s no big secret that the American military saw an inordinate amount of suicide and suicidal ideation, veterans and active duty alike, especially people who’d seen the shit John had seen. He’d been an officer long enough to sit in on those meetings, to be a part of the development of resiliency programs. At this point in his career he isn’t blind to the need for recreation, especially in Atlantis – he’d been the one to put the bug in Heightmeyer’s ear about mandatory rest days, he’d been the one to request R4R dollars from the Air Force for art supplies, for a lending library, for basketball hoops and board games. He’d instituted resiliency forums every quarter and meets with all 26 of his group leaders every month to discuss morale.

John’s been military for a long time, and he’s heard the shit that soldiers say to each other, the way they rib each other, the way getting a group of bored troops in the same room can be a recipe for disaster. He was knocking skulls together since before he had the oak leaf to back him up, but he honestly thought coming to the Pegasus Galaxy would make _this_ kind of officering a thing of his past. They were in another _galaxy_ and the soldiers here were another caliber entirely – smart and sharp and excellent. A certain kind of gravitas came with this kind of thing – he’d just forgotten that kids will always, always be kids.

There are two things he cannot do in this moment: he can’t look at Rodney, and he can’t laugh. If he laughs he will lose all credibility, and the four knuckleheads standing in front of him will think that this kind of stupid behavior is _okay_. It is most certainly _not okay_ , and when did John turn into his father, seriously?

“Start at the beginning,” he says to his Marine corporal – James Hitchens, Wichita Falls, 23 years old and blond like sunlight and _clearly a moron_. He holds up his finger. “Let me be clear. If you bullshit me I will know, and if I know, the world of hurt coming to you is going to make an Article 15 look like a weekend getaway.”

The blood drains right out of little Jimmy’s face, and Lorne twitches next to him. John’s aware that the legend had grown with time, though it was all very hush-hush – not even Lorne knew what had gone on behind closed doors, only that Stackhouse had been confined to quarters for 14 days and had come out a different man. What almost no one knows is that Stackhouse had wrenched a groin muscle having extremely athletic and ill-advised sex in a puddle jumper in zero-G and almost crashed the jumper into Tower 5, and John had found out about it when Rachel Simpson had called Command, frantic and requesting assistance.

The groin muscle had required _surgery_ , and the lazy California-boy attitude John wore like an old sweater had slipped away to be replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard, a dude John had never met before and who frankly freaked him the fuck out.

He doesn’t exactly remember what he told Stackhouse in the infirmary, only that by the time it was over, he’d been hoarse and Stackhouse had been as white as the sheets under him. He also doesn’t remember giving the Article 15; when he came back to himself he’d already written the reprimand, garnished both Stackhouse’s wages and barter points, and confined him to quarters. Not that Stackhouse could have moved much anyway, what with the healing groin muscle, but still, it was the _point_ of the thing.

The legend had grown that John wasn’t fucking around, and suddenly the salutes he got were a little crisper, the knock of boots a little louder, which told John he’d maybe gone too far in the other direction. Rodney had called him out on it the first time he saw one of the A1C’s literally stumble to a stop in the hall and throw off a perfect three-point salute, because Rodney was an asshole and Simpson had confessed the entire sordid affair to him between furious sobs. “Is this your new schtick? Do I need to practice? Will you accept Canadian salutes?”

“Shut up Rodney,” John had said between his teeth, though he had secretly agreed it was a little much. Good for morale and good for unit cohesion and good for discipline, and _terrible_ because John had become The Man. He did _not want to be_ the Man. “You confined Simpson to quarters too.”

“Yeah, _Stackhouse’s_ quarters,” Rodney had said, waving a hand. “They’ve been an item since forever, honestly I’m not surprised, though the kink factor shouldn’t have overridden common sense. If I’d had to fish their corpses out of Tower 5 amidst the wreckage of another perfectly good jumper I would have been pissed.”

At the time John hadn’t had a clue that Stackhouse and Simpson had been an item. He just thought they were hitting it off, crossing military-civilian lines. Technically, in hindsight, they had been. “Since when do _you_ know anything about who’s doing who?”

Rodney had rolled his eyes, given him what John secretly refers to as his ‘girl, please’ look, and stalked off in a huff. John has yet to find a moment to tell Rodney how annoying he is when he does that, which is a bald-faced lie because it’s also crazy hot.

Hitchens has the good grace not to try and bullshit him, which is a point in favor of his having a brain between his ears. There’s a glob of orange fire retardant hanging from the edge of his sharp jaw, and John can hear the squish of his boots from here. “Permission to speak, sir.”

“Granted.”

“We were stupid sir.”

John doesn’t say _you think?_ through sheer force of will. “Walk me through it.”

“About how we’re stupid, sir?”

“The fact that you’re stupid is not a question, but a proven fact,” Rodney snaps from where he’s pacing behind John.

“We didn’t know it would happen sir, we were just messing around,” and this is the Wrong Thing To Say, even John knows that, and the looks of horror Hitchens’ buddies give him would be hilarious at any other moment. It’s hilarious _now_.

“Permission to speak sir,” O’Malley (25, Pensacola, working on his graduate degree in business leadership) says, and at John’s glare he blurts, “Doyle does parkour, and he was talking smack in the Mess about how he could jump the pipes running through the Science division, the big ones overhead, and sir we bet him that – ” and one of the other kids, Richards (24, Boise, pet fish in his quarters he thought no one knew about), makes a little moaning squeak low in his throat because John’s regs on gambling had been one of the first things he put into place when he took command of Atlantis.

The room falls silent.

“You bet him what, Corporal.”

The kid has owl eyes, and when John calmly says, “I asked you a question,” he blurts, “We bet him the funny P90-114 brownies from tomorrow night’s chow that he wouldn’t be able to parkour the conduit in the Science Wing.”

“Let me get this straight,” John says, silky and low, as Lorne exhales and rubs a hand over his face. Doyle (25, New York City, Sicilian accent, apparently a parkour enthusiast) has the grace to blanch. “You all bet each other that Doyle would be able to jump the conduit, without first thinking about what the conduit had running through it, and the danger you were placing both yourselves and the scientists who work in that area in.”

“You took out power to the entire floor,” Rodney explodes, and John has to hand it to him, he’d kept his cool for longer than John thought he would. “You somehow – somehow! – convinced Atlantis that we were undergoing massive power fluctuations created by unstable levels in the fire suppression system, thereby _triggering_ the fire suppression system and literally coating everything with Ancient fire-stopping goo that smells like ass because it’s been sitting there for ten thousand years and has caused allergic reactions in a full one-third of my anthropologists. While they’re useless soft scientists they’re _my_ useless soft scientists and your bone-headed, idiotic—”

Rodney goes on for a little while, but John’s seen the look that has come over Hitchens’ face more than once, especially in the mirror – the kid has shut down. He’s taking his licks and internalizing them, and while that’s not a bad thing when they live in a city they don’t understand, in a galaxy that wants to kill them 27 hours a day, this wasn’t quite joy-riding-alien-space-ships-for-sexy-times level of Bad. It wasn’t great, because jumping over pipes in an alien city was the height of stupidity, and not that he wasn’t going to reprimand the shit out of this kid, but John’s been in his shoes. This is John’s fault, after all.

“ _Attention_ ,” he barks, and all four of his men straighten immediately, boot heals coming together and hands curled into fists at their sides, and John feels like the biggest hypocrite on the face of this and every other planet. Lorne has come to attention too, because he’s a better 2IC than John deserves, and John has even shut Rodney up, who’s turned to stare at him like he’d forgotten John was the boss. It’s _hot_ , the look he gives John, and if John wasn’t so pissed off he’d probably respond to it, but Lt. Col Sheppard is in charge right now and that guy is kind of a dick. “Willful dereliction of duty is unacceptable under my command. You put your lives, and the lives of the civilians we are honor-bound to protect, in harm’s way. You will each receive a formal reprimand, and 30 days restriction to the base barring emergency. You’ll work 14 extra duty days, starting today, that you will spend one-on-one with Dr. McKay’s team to clean the fire retardant. Let me be clear, gentlemen. You are here at my will. If you _ever_ do anything like this again, I’ll rotate you back to Earth so fast your heads will spin. Do I make myself clear.”

“Sir, yes sir,” his men respond, and John barks, “ _Dismissed,_ ” because his head is throbbing and all he wants to do is curl up under his desk ala George Costanza and never come out again.

He lovehates the look Rodney’s giving him once they’re alone, and slow-collapses into his desk chair like the weight of this misbegotten hellhole of a galaxy is sitting on his shoulders. “Are your people okay?”

Rodney’s eyes are wide as saucers. “Fine. Hives mostly. It’s actually a good find, we knew Atlantis had a fire retardant system but hadn’t figured out where to access it, and when your idiots sprung the leak we got access to the system in the Control Room. Can I suck your cock?”

It’s such a non sequitur that John blinks, but nope, he heard right, because that’s Rodney sinking down to his knees between John’s splayed legs, that’s the snap-bolt of the lock being thrown on the door to his office, those are Rodney’s nimble fingers unbuttoning his uniform pants. “You said you didn’t have a drill sergeant kink.”

“No, I have a ‘John Sheppard in command’ kink, apparently. That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” Rodney says, almost _angry_ , and the swell of affection that sweeps up John’s throat almost chokes him.

“I thought you said me eating Nutella with a fork in your bed was the hottest thing you’d ever seen,” John says, but he’s laughing because Rodney is fighting with his belt buckle and John loves him so very much. “I’m trying to be pissed off here.”

“You’re one-hundred-percent failing,” Rodney says, and kisses his little colonel pooch that he hates but also kind of gives him some gravitas. He’s too old and too tired to have a six pack anymore. “You wish they’d invited you.”

“Why do you think I’m so mad,” John says, and runs his fingers through Rodney’s thinning hair, and leans down to kiss him just because he can. “You want me to do the voice?”

“I’ll probably punch you in the balls if you do,” Rodney says, smiling against his mouth. “It only works when you use it on idiots. Now shut up and let me work.”

“Sir, yes sir,” John says, smiling right back.


End file.
